On February 4, 2005, I drank on the job. At the time, I worked for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in Manhattan. The Center is where New York City’s LGBT community has gathered for community organizing, to express our rage and sorrow, and to celebrate major victories along our march toward justice through civil rights litigation and legislation. On that particular evening, I joined a couple hundred members of our community along with several “electeds” to raise a glass toasting Lambda Legal’s victory in New York state court that found it was unconstitutional to ban marriages of same-sex couples in New York. Later that same year, I’d go on to join Lambda Legal and lead the organization’s PR activities in support of our marriage equality cases in New York, California and Washington.
Whenever I’m asked on a panel about the work that I’ve done that I’m most proud of, it’s not the work or job that has paid me the most money. I always come back to the work I was privileged to do with the plaintiffs in Lambda Legal’s marriage equality lawsuits. Because they had the courage to sue their government for the same rights and protections different-sex couples were afforded through marriage, I had the opportunity to help same-sex marriage plaintiffs and their families tell their stories and share them broadly through the media. Moreover, I had the opportunity to media train grassroots activists to help them tell their own stories and share them with their local news outlets (which still existed at the time, barely) and with their elected officials. Our efforts helped us win the case for marriage equality in the court of public opinion in New York, where we shifted the percentage of the population in favor of marriage equality from a minority to a majority as people became more familiar with our stories and the basic protections our families lacked because we were barred from marriage.
Fast forward to June 2020, and my husband and I will celebrate 22 years together give or take a day from when this post lands on this blog—12 of those years as a married couple (thank you Canada!). I’m grateful for work that fulfills me, but I’m forever indebted to the brave plaintiffs who fought for the rights that my family and I now get to enjoy. Our six year-old daughter will never have to worry about whether or not she’s covered under our family health insurance plan. My husband and I don’t have to worry about what will happen to our estate if and when one of us predeceases the other. My straight peers (many of them, at least) no longer pause awkwardly when I claim my gayness every time I refer to “my husband” in conversation.
This June, I’m being particularly mindful that I need to listen more. People listened when we shared our families’ stories, which led to securing some of the legal protections for which our community has been fighting. Now, people are taking to the streets in part because we’ve been ignoring African Americans’ stories and their contributions to our national narrative for centuries.
As we share our stories, we become more relatable because we make ourselves vulnerable as we air our wounds. As we become more relatable, we begin to be in relationship with one another. This Pride season, I look forward to hearing the stories that are currently being written in the streets, classrooms, conference rooms and boardrooms around the world.